New Research Paper: Palm Oil Deterioration

Palm oil and palm kernel oil based ingredients are found in approximately 50% of products on supermarket shelves, including food and non food items. Palm oil in many countries is used as a simple frying oil, but many other markets make use of both palm and palm kernel oil:

Consumer retail food and snack manufacturers

Personal care and cosmetics (mainly palm kernel oil)

Biofuel and energy

Animal feed (palm kernel expeller)

Pharmaceutical

Industrial

Foodservice/service industry

Our team of experts have written a new research paper on Palm Oil Deterioration, titled ‘Use of headspace – gas chromatography – ion mobility spectrometry to detect volatile fingerprints of palm fibre oil and sludge palm oil in samples of crude palm oil.’

Abstract:

The addition of residual oils such as palm fibre oil (PFO) and sludge palm oil (SPO) to crude palm oil (CPO) can be problematic within supply chains. PFO is thought to aggravate the accumulation of monochloropropanediols (MCPDs) in CPO, whilst SPO is an acidic by-product of CPO milling and is not fit for human consumption. Traditional targeted techniques to detect such additives are costly, time-consuming and require highly trained operators. Therefore, we seek to assess the use of gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry (GC–IMS) for rapid, cost-effective screening of CPO for the presence of characteristic PFO and SPO volatile organic compound (VOC) fingerprints.